The attempted torpedo attack by the British destroyer scared the Prinz Eugen up and down enough.

By the time the horror had subsided, the heavy cruiser was completely enraged by the attack of the British destroyers.

The fact that he was almost blown up by the torpedoes fired by the British just now made the German officers and soldiers who reacted feel that their personal dignity had been seriously hurt.

In the eyes of these German naval officers and men, although the British attacked themselves openly, this courage was indeed admirable.

However, the warriors at sea should generously bombard each other with artillery, and a sneak attack with torpedoes is really shameless and simply a cowardly act.

So in the eyes of these glorious and proud Germanic sea knights, the British became outright sneak attackers, shameless murderers, not real warriors, not real men, but bandits who could only cast dark arrows on the side, etc......

The poor British officers and men were not only knocked to the ground by the officers and men of this German heavy cruiser, but also trampled on more than a thousand feet.

And these Germans did not want to think about the huge difference in strength between themselves and those two small opponents, and the German Navy was also good at torpedo attacks, and had never seen them have the habit of greeting each other in advance before a torpedo attack.

In fact, these German naval officers and men were looking for psychological comfort in their previous mistakes, after all, as a proud naval soldier, they were almost killed by such a weak opponent, and this feeling was very bad, and since they could not find a reason to self-extricate, they could only blame the enemy for all the faults.

Annoyed, the Prinz Eugen asked the flagship for permission to break away from formation and attack the British destroyers, and while pouring out her anger at the two British destroyers that were frantically fleeing under gunfire, she began to slowly turn to make way for the flagship Admiral Scheer, which was following behind.

Without much consideration, Admiral Lütjans simply agreed to the heavy cruiser's request.

The commander of the Ocean Fleet had been suffering from the death of the battleship in the battle line, and in order to show his loyalty to the great young Führer of Germany, he had to do everything in his power to ensure the safety of the Führer's envoy who was on that ship.

What's even more troublesome is that the ship also carried almost half of the Imperial Naval Academy, these naval reserve officers are a valuable asset for the future development of the Imperial Navy, and if these non-commissioned officers and students incur serious losses in battle, Admiral Del will eat himself raw without touching the condiment.

From the very beginning of the plan, Lütjans put this battleship in a safe strategic reserve position, but he did not expect that as soon as the war began, the Führer's envoy actually put forward a request to participate in the battle, and Lütjans, who had always been cautious, certainly did not dare to refuse the Führer's envoy's request.

So the poor vice admiral commanded the fleet and had to pay attention to the safety of the battleship while directing the fleet. Lütjans really couldn't say anything about the pain in his heart, so he could only pray that God would bless the precious battleship and not let anything happen to him.

The previous outlaw assault of the British destroyers was a deep surprise to him, and these destroyers were now indeed a threat to the flanks of the fleet array. He was trying to transfer a battleship from the light cruiser formation behind him to pick up these pesky boats and protect the flanks of the fleet's battleships as they turned.

Since the heavy cruiser, who was now in his place in the dangerous shelling queue, had made such a request, he had no reason to disagree.

Lütjans did not know that the Prinz Eugen had just escaped from a torpedo attack from a British destroyer, and that in the eyes of the fleet commander the heavy cruiser was a new ship, but the British destroyers could pose no threat to her other than those torpedoes, and it was only a matter of time before the small destroyers were cleaned up with the firepower of this battleship.

In order to show his concern for his subordinates, and more so that the Führer's envoy on that battleship could demonstrate his rich experience, Lütjans replied to the request of the Prinz Eugen and added at the end of the sentence "Beware of torpedo attacks from the opposing destroyers."

The commander's ordinary advice dealt another blow to the pride of the officers on the Prinz Eugen, and the concern of his comrades became an unbearable irony in their eyes.

The Prinz Eugen quickly replied to the flagship with a "understood", then turned the rudder sharply and pulled the whistle and pounced on the two British destroyers who were fleeing in confusion.

The entire officers and men of the Prinz Eugen were determined to cleanse themselves of their disgrace with the blood of the British, although no one but themselves thought that the British had humiliated them somewhere.

"Fire! Fire! Tear them apart! As long as they are still floating on the sea, there should be no ceasefire, and let these British Yankees see what kind of fate they will get if they challenge the dignity of German naval officers. Blockade the deck of an enemy ship, I don't want to see anyone moving on it unless the other side makes it clear that they surrender to us. The port side observation group closely monitored the movements of the enemy cruiser and reported immediately if there was a situation. ”

Feng. Admiral Hertz stood in front of the narrow observation slit on the armored bridge, shouting orders.

The subordinate naval officers and combat officers stood on their respective cāo platforms and issued the captain's combat orders to the corresponding posts of the ship, although the scene in the bridge was a bit chaotic on the surface, but in fact everything was going on in an orderly manner.

The helmsman repeated the navigation officer's cāo rudder instructions over and over again, flexibly playing the steering wheel, and finely regulating the course of the battleship.

The combat officer wears headphones and constantly receives feedback from each battle position, and adjusts the firepower distribution of the battleship according to the angle of the ship's position.

Several non-commissioned officers stood in front of the chart, constantly observing the trajectory of the battleship recorded by the automatic route, and marking the relative positions and tracks of the two sides on the chart according to the position parameters of the enemy ship sent by the artillery observation room.

The two British destroyers had given up the foolish idea of continuing to approach the enemy ships for close shelling after encountering the ferocious blocking fire of the German Navy.

The rising columns of water around the hull finally calmed down the two frantic destroyer captains.

In fact, when they saw that both battleships were aiming their firepower at them, they should have known that there was nothing they could do, but the fanatical belief in dedicating themselves to the British Empire made them lose the ability to judge the situation correctly.

After five minutes of struggling through German artillery fire, the blood in the hearts of the British officers and men began to slowly cool.

Perhaps because they had successfully torpedoed the enemy ship, at this time no British would have expected that this attack would be the kind of stunned result, these British sailors felt that they had done their duty for the empire and the king, and the German navy's artillery fire began to become more and more intensive, in this case, the human instinct to survive** began to slowly overwhelm the loyalty to the empire to the king, in any case, they had done much more for the king than they imagined.

But they came to their senses too late, and a difficult and formidable enemy was already eyeing them.

The current behavior of the two destroyers is very apt to describe as panicked, they desperately do orbital maneuvers, crossing the course back and forth, intending to avoid the fire of the terrifying enemy that is approaching frantically.

Both destroyers had been wounded and could no longer run at their top speed, but they were still able to maintain a speed of 30 knots and run frantically for their lives.

At this speed, it was still possible to throw off ordinary German warships, but unfortunately, they met the Prince Eugen, who was also proud of its speed, and it was a pity that they rushed too close to the German fleet.

By the time the two destroyers turned around and began to flee in the direction of their own fleet, the Prinz Eugen was already like an angry Tyrannosaurus rex spewing flames towards the two weak adversaries who had offended them.

The 18,000-ton heavy cruiser was as nimble as a 100-ton lightning striker, and before the two destroyers could react, the skull banner of the Killer had already taken up their position on the left rear and began to slowly ravage the two opponents who had humiliated her with all the weapons they could reach.

The Prinz Eugen's two twin twin forward main turrets each chose a frantically fleeing destroyer as a target to begin a pleasant flat-fire bombardment.

Since it was a destroyer and not on the list of prisoners that had to be captured, the Prinz Eugen could attack in any way she saw fit.

However, because the Germans rushed so hard, the distance between the two sides was too close.

The bulwarks of the British D-class destroyers were notoriously low, while the bulwarks of the Prinz Eugen as an assault ship operating in the North Sea were very high. As a result, Prince Eugen's four powerful main guns were all aimed at the destroyer's tall bridge, because they had nowhere else to shoot because of the lack of firing angles.

On the starboard side of the Prinz Eugen, the three 105-mm high-level dual-purpose guns were used, and this excellent naval gun, which was very famous in World War II, was best suited for this kind of shooting at medium and close ranges.

So six rapid-fire 105 naval guns began to storm the deck of the British destroyer at a rate of one fire every five seconds.

The destroyer Defender, the closest to the Prinz Eugen, bore the brunt of the attack, and although the brave British sailors fought back with the two 120mm guns in the stern, the difference in strength between the two sides was too far.

After four close-range shots from the Prinz Eugen, the Defender was reduced to a burning pile of scrap metal.

Her bridge was completely destroyed by the third salvo of the German battleship, and the lightly armored box structure was completely wiped out from its base by high-explosive grenades, leaving only a burning pile of twisted wreckage.

The two main guns in the head have been blown away along with the first floor, the front chimney is only the lower half, and the rear chimney has disappeared, the twisted steam pipe is frantically spraying strong steam and hot water into the air, the destroyer has completely lost power and began to slow down.

There was not a single moving figure on the deck of the battleship, and there were charred and mutilated corpses everywhere.

There was not a single thing like a lifeboat on the lifeboat deck in the middle, they had been torn to pieces of wood by the rainstorm of 37-mm shells.

The two quadruple 533-mm torpedo tubes that almost blew the Prinz Eugen directly into Iceland have burned to the point where they were burned, but unfortunately they were not loaded with torpedoes, otherwise the battleship's suffering would have ended with a roar.

The Y turret at the stern of the ship had become a burning bonfire, the X turret was now in its place with a large hole spewing flames outward, and the depth charges on the depth charge release track had probably been thrown overboard by the British sailors, otherwise it would be another disaster, and the same was true for the two depth charge launchers, leaving only the slippery launch rod looming in the raging flames.

The Defender has become a burning steel coffin, and the only options available to the officers and men of the Royal Navy are to hide in the burning hull and be cremated or buried at sea, or to climb to the deck and be killed by German fire and cremated or buried there.

It was quite a horrible thing to be burned alive, not to mention that the battleship was slowly sinking, and the Germans must have dug a lot of holes in the waterline of this ship, and the sea water was so fast that the boiler and engine room were so fast that the horrible roar of the boiler could be heard even on the deck of the Prinz Eugen.

The twin 37-mm guns and the quadruple 20-mm guns on the Prinz Eugen had finally stopped firing at the wreckage, and the various large and medium-caliber guns had already shifted their fire to another fleeing enemy.

At this moment, a dozen figures suddenly rushed out of the exit of the first floor of the Defender, which made the German sailors almost unable to believe their eyes, they could not understand how the British sailors had survived the terrible attack in this burning crematorium.

A quadruple 20mm gunner excitedly pulled the bolt to open fire on the figures, but was stopped by the commander of the artillery group standing behind him with a standard civilian gesture, and he slapped the officer in the back of the head.

"What the hell are you trying to do you idiot? They are already left with no resistance, we are glorious German naval servicemen, not butchers. ”

The British sailors first ran to the stern of the ship in the smoke billowing from the deck, and when they reached the amidship and found that the lifeboat had become a pile of broken logs, they began to stumble towards the bow of the ship, which by this time had burned into a ball of fire.

Several of the men's uniforms were suddenly ignited by the heat, and they screamed and jumped out of the side of the ship into the floating oily water, while others found themselves cornered, and one survivor after another jumped into the sea.

They were not wearing life jackets, their skin and respiratory tract were irritated by the toxic heavy oil on the water's surface, and these people struggled desperately to swim away from the sinking battleship in the sticky oil slick.

Because the destroyer, which had been almost flattened by the Germans, was making a chilling sound of metal twisting and breaking, and everyone knew that the battleship was about to capsize.

The Prince Eugen passed by the Defender at a rapid pace, and she still had an enemy to solve, and the Happy fled desperately in the direction of the British fleet with billowing black smoke from 350 meters away from her.

The sailors aboard the Prinz Eugen looked at the slowly tilting Defender's shattered and charred husk, but it was the only way to make up for their previous mistakes.

War is cruel, as long as you wear this uniform, then you must have the consciousness of becoming a broken corpse, this is the unanimous idea of all officers and soldiers.

The Defender finally rolled over with a wail, and then slid to the bottom of the sea with mist and columns of water, and before the British sailors could swim out of the wreck, they screamed loudly and were sucked into the bottom of the sea by a large whirlpool.

The remaining dozen or so lucky ones struggled helplessly on the sea, and a few seriously injured sailors began to wave their arms and cry for help to the Prinz Eugen, which was speeding by.

The battle was still going on, and it was impossible for the Prinz Eugen to stop at the risk of being attacked as a live target in order to save a few enemy drowning personnel, but it was not in the chivalric tradition of the German Navy to watch them drown alive.

A large inflatable life raft and several lifebuoys were thrown into the sea from the stern of the ship, and the German officers and men who had just completed a killing felt a little comfort in their hearts as they watched the British desperately swim to those precious life-saving equipment.

As the battle continued, the Pleasant was not able to escape, and a 203-millimeter shell that hit the engine room ended her escape.

Vapor gushed out from the exits of the various cabins, and the ship stumbled forward as if it had tripped over something, and its bow was almost buried in the crest of the wave.

The Pleasant continued to struggle and glide forward for some distance before coming to a halt, and then another German shell landed accurately on the deck of the de-powered destroyer.

The Prinz Eugen ruthlessly harvested the lives of the Royal Navy officers and men, and shells of all sizes swept across the narrow deck of the battleship again and again.

In less than fifteen seconds, the Pleasant was a ruined incinerator like her sister ship, the Defender, and before that the Pleasant had only had time to fire two volleys at the Prinz Eugen.

All the superstructure of the battleship was completely destroyed, and the deck burned into a sea of fire.

With this mental vent of the previous Defender, the Prinz Eugen gradually calmed down, and after two salvos of secondary guns stopped ravaging the destroyer, and the Germans were ready to give those British sailors a chance to abandon ship and escape.

However, to the regret of the German naval officers, the British were not able to escape in the end.

Three seconds later, the destroyer suddenly exploded in a terrifying explosion, and it was not known whether the fire ignited the ammunition depot on her ship or the depth charge depot.

The huge shock wave was so strong that it could be observed with the naked eye, and all kinds of steel fragments rushed towards the deck of the Prince Eugen, and a Hutchikes machine gun with its gun mount rolled over a distance of more than three hundred meters in front of the eyes and landed on the compass bridge of the Prince Eugen.

The Faster exploded to pieces in front of the German naval officers and sailors, and the remaining half of the bow with the wreckage of a 120-mm gun struggled on the water for four or five seconds before plunging headlong into the sea with a beautiful backward roll and then vanishing without a trace.

All that remained on the surface of the water was a large mass of heavy oil, all kinds of burning and smoking debris, and various debris on the ship, proving that there was once a 1,900-ton destroyer floating here a few seconds ago.

The Prinz Eugen did not slow down, the battle continued, and the battleship did not have time to express any emotion.

Brushing less than fifty meters from the site of the Pleasantry's sinking, the Prinz Eugen made a gentle turn to port.

The most beautiful heavy cruiser of the German Navy made a beautiful arc on the sea, and she did not realize that she had left her original course while chasing the two destroyers.

Prince Eugen had unwittingly inserted himself into the inner formation of the British cruiser fleet, which was fighting with the outer shelling arrays.

Now the battleship with the black skull flag has found her next target, an opponent who finally seems to be more suitable for her identity, the British Royal Navy light cruiser Sheffield.

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